 Hello and welcome to today's Bite Size CPD session. Today I'm talking to you about you. This is all about how you as a department can think about supporting each other's well-being. So I used to just talk about child and adolescent mental health but we can't get away from the fact that we need to look after our own well-being too and schools are tough places to work. So I've worked hard with lots of colleagues across the UK and beyond thinking about how can we promote better staff well-being. I can share loads of different ideas on that but the thing I'm learning as I get to know more about this is that the best answers kind of come from within. So this session is to help you as a team have a think about what you can do for each other in order to promote your well-being as a team because you are the experts in you. So the first thing that I want you to think about pause the video and have a think about is where are the crunch points in your year? Where are the points in the year where regularly as a team as a department things feel more difficult? Those times when you find that you're beginning to flag a bit perhaps your mood is a bit low you're a bit more anxious things are getting on top of you it all feels quite tricky. Spoiler alert! Third week of November tends to be a popular one so when are those times for you? When are the crunch points when things feel tough? Okay so you've had to think about when those times are you kind of identified perhaps in the academic year or in the term ahead when those difficult moments are likely to arise. What I want you to think about next is how as a team you can better prepare for those moments okay it's really difficult to be reactive as those difficult times arise but planning ahead for the term for the year ahead you're in a really good position to proactively think about how better to manage those weeks. So things that often work are things like saying well we know that that's a week when everyone's feeling tired so let's try and give everyone a bit more time to sleep or rest or relax or catch up. We can do that by doing things like scheduling a week with no meetings before or after school or thinking about whether as a team as a department we can do some joint planning ahead for that week so that we don't have to do so much planning as we go through. We might also think about whether we can co-teach or co-deliver some of our sessions that week and maybe think about what we're doing in terms of homework as well perhaps we can be setting stuff that requires less input and marking from us that week or we might also think about how our well-being might reflect the well-being of our students as well and think maybe this is a time when the students might also benefit from a bit of time to rest, relax, catch up or have a slightly different mode of homework or home learning that week as well. The other thing that I'd suggest that you do as a team as a department as part of this exercise is just to have a look at all the different meetings and regular items that you have scheduled and consider which of those you don't really need to do. So I'm a big fan of the to-don't list we've all got massive to-do lists right as a department at a to-don't list so you're going to pause the video now and you're going to have a think about in those crunch weeks those difficult moments that you have identified in the months, the term, the year ahead what could you do as a team to relieve some of the burden that we can enable yourself a bit more time for rest and relaxation. Okay so we've thought about this at a team level now we're going to focus down a little bit on a personal and an individual level because actually each of us is different and sure there are points in the year that are in common for the whole department or maybe even across most of the school that are more difficult for us perhaps as we're entering towards exams or as we get towards the end of term those sorts of things but we also have times that might be personally more challenging for us and that can be for a variety of different reasons things like anniversaries and milestones of having lost a loved one or if we know that a partner or someone else in the family is going to be facing specific challenges that we might need to support with or maybe you've got other stuff going on equally you might be the kind of person who knows your own patterns and you know that maybe like me that you really struggle in those darker winter months and that your mood is likely to take a dip and you'd appreciate support from colleagues. So next I want you to have a think about when might those points be for you do you have any way of predicting them and are you able to communicate with colleagues when the times might be that you personally might require a little bit of extra support so have a think about that personally. It can be really challenging to ask colleagues for help and again that gets more challenging as we become more bogged down with difficult thoughts and feelings and anxieties and low mood and so on so thinking ahead about when we might need that help and asking now at a time of hopefully relative calm and happiness for the sorts of things that might be helpful can be a really good proactive strategy to protect and guard against those difficult times. Have a think about the ways that you might be able to offer support to a colleague at those kinds of times and also have a think about what would be helpful for them to do for you and sometimes this will be kind of school-based stuff it might be that they're able to support you with their planning that they're able to share things that have worked for them that kind of thing and relieve some of that kind of academic burden but equally it might be that you're looking for some more practical support maybe it's the you know you've got a particularly busy week coming up at one point in terms so perhaps it'd be really helpful for a colleague to support you by making lunch and maybe you return the favor another time in the year. There's not a right way and a wrong way to do this the whole point of this is to help you discuss together what would help you so have a think with your team about the things that would help you and how you can help others at those difficult times. Finally what I'd like you to do as a team is to agree a time when you're going to review this have a look and see how things are going in terms of your well-being as a team whether there's more that you can do to support each other whether the changes that you're trying to make are having an impact and whether you need to do things differently or celebrate if it's going well because we need to take time to do that too. Have a think when are you going to review this make a commitment put it in your diaries if you promise to take an action and you commit to it in this way you're much more likely to actually follow through on it so when will you review this have you actually put a date in your diaries if you haven't you're dead to me no okay but please do actually think about when you're going to do this okay I hope there was some helpful discussion that came up as part of this please do leave a comment below suggesting what you're going to do as a team to support each other's well-being I'd really like to hear your different ideas and remember loads of different people watch these videos so if you take time to share what's working well for you or what you're planning to try then those ideas will often get picked up and shared by other schools as well. If you want more ideas around staff well-being then I'd really recommend this book by Andrew Cowley just for the record this and every other book I recommend on my channel is not like I'm not being paid to endorse it I just think it's really good. I guess I should probably also say if you're interested in staff well-being my book my book's quite good too I do obviously benefit if you buy this I get like about a penny or something if you buy a copy the first chapter well the first two chapters in this book are around staff well-being so it's about the whole school approach to mental health but staff matter most and first so we start there so yeah two two two recommendations for you I hope this was helpful take care stay safe please subscribe and leave comments down below if you've got ideas for future videos that you would like to see thank you bye